The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics

Book Review Chapter 22:

The Matter of Plagiarism: What, Why, and If: JOHN SNAPPER

Library Reference: N/A

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer-Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232853902&sr=8-1

Quote:  “The open source movement in software remains a major area of controversy”

    Although open source movement may be good because it helps us people and makes our lives easier. The only problem is, some people actually claim that it’s there work and resulting in plagiarism. If your going to use someone’s work, you have to give credit to the real author and have authorization to do so.

Learning Expectation:

    Based on the title of the chapter, obviously, we will or we can expect to learn all about plagiarism.  Although I may already know what plagiarism already is or at least its definition, I want to further increase my knowledge on plagiarism. Moreover, I want to learn what the author has to say about it and how ethics is basically applied to it.

Review:

    Plagiarism as we all know it, it is the process where in you copy everything an author did and making it as your own by putting your name on it with the exact same content the original author wrote. I am not exactly sure if there is a law for this but as far as I know, you can get sued for plagiarism or copying another persons work.

As you read through the chapter, it will first explain to us the concept of plagiarism. Unlike before, today it is so easy to plagiarize someone’s work. Why? It’s because of computers. With computers, it is very easy to edit things with the help of certain software and make it look like you wrote or made it. The chapter also talks about lack of authorization in economic foundations, moral rights, and lack of accreditation on noninfringing plagiarism, personal view of plagiarism of the author and literature view. So basically, this chapter is all about plagiarism and its relation to ethics,

What I’ve learned:

    I have learned that before you can even sue or tell that someone copied your work without authorization, it must first be carefully analyzed. Because I think that there can be misinterpretations about the work and it may turn out to not a plagiarism. So I think this is good that before suing somebody, we should try to analyze first. But then of course, there’s this thing where the author can automatically say that it’s his work. So, I think it really depends.

Questions:

1.    Can you go to jail for plagiarism?

2.    Are there millions caught doing this?

3.    What punishments do they get?

4.    Are people coming up with a deeper approach on this matter?

5.    Who invented plagiarism?

Citation: (Kenneth Einar E. Himma & Herman T. Tavani, 2008)